Why Has Felicity Been Missing?

So this weekend, American Girl had a AG Rewards event where attendees got free totes - but five out of the original six characters were there. Samantha, Kirsten, Molly, Addy and Josefina. When the My First American Girl collection launched last week, five out of the original six characters were there. Samantha, Kirsten, Molly, Addy and Josefina. In both instances, Felicity Merriman, the Revolutionary War era doll who was the fourth released American Girl doll, has been missing. But why has she been missing?

One common explanation I have seen on social media is a rather problematic aspect of Felicity's story that's resurfaced over the years - Felicity's family owned enslaved people. Felicity's grandfather had a plantation filled with them, and there are several enslaved people in the Merriman family, including Rose. American Girl might have wanted to shy away from this topic, especially considering their commitment to diversity and inclusion that was a driving force in the early 2020s.

But I actually think the explanation of Felicity being missing in recent releases could have nothing to do with this. Think about it this way - as we learned when we reread Kirsten Learns A Lesson, the depiction of Indigenous people in the story originally wasn't so great. (Side note - I've had to adjust to a new schedule recently with school starting, so I apologize for the lack of book discussion posts over the last few weeks. However, I found a day of the week that works with my new schedule, and Thursdays work the best with it! However, to give you all time to read Meet Molly, I'll skip another week and post the discussion next Thursday. Okay, back to the post.) American Girl, however, made the conscious decision with that major plot point to rewrite it in a more respectful way when they rereleased Kirsten's school set earlier this year, along with adding more context in the Looking Back section and addressing the issue in the foreword.

If American Girl were to reintroduce Felicity now, I feel like they have two options for what would be the best thing to do regarding the "Felicity's family owned enslaved people" issue. The first thing they could do is take a similar approach to what they did when reintroducing Kirsten's story - take time, add more information in Looking Back, and address that yes, it was wrong for Felicity's family to literally own people. If the text can't be changed like Kirsten's, they could also add a disclaimer that the story was written in a different time period, reflects a different time period, and again, add more in Looking Back about the issue.

So, if American Girl can fix the issue and not shy away from historical reality as they have done many times before, why is Felicity missing? The simple answer could be that Felicity is currently not available to purchase, and Felicity has been rereleased to death over the last few decades. Felicity was originally made an online-only doll in 2002. Then, she was relaunched in 2005. Then, she was retired in 2011. Then, she rereleased in 2017. Then, she retired again in 2019. Then, she was rereleased and retired AGAIN in 2021. Meanwhile, it was only Molly's second time being reintroduced on her own when she came back in 2022, and it was Kirsten's first time being reintroduced on her own when she came back in 2024. Besides, there have been rumors about Felicity getting a modern-inspired outfit in 2026. If she were to be axed forever, those rumors wouldn't be floating around.

So yeah - it IS a valid question to ask about why Felicity has been forgotten, given that very troubling aspect of her story. But to illustrate why American Girl should take accountability and give people an accurate view of history instead of leaving Felicity in the vault forever without taking accountability, let me tell you a little story from the 90s, when American Girl was first developing Addy. American Girl really wanted to introduce their first African American doll, but a few time periods were debated for the setting. The Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights era were considered (which would later be made into dolls as well - just decades later!), but every discussion about those time periods and how to tell their history accurately led to slavery. Why did the Great Migration happen? Racial tensions due to slavery. Why did African Americans have no equal rights in the 1960s? Slavery. With that, American Girl decided to tell history head-on and educate girls everywhere about slavery with the release of Addy.

As I've grown older, I've grown more appreciative of the historical details in American Girl stories. Every single grade I've had in school, from kindergarten to senior year of high school, was in the same school district in the same small town in North Carolina, which didn't teach us much in depth about slavery. It was through Addy's story - not just where she started, but how she found freedom and learned a lot in her new life in Philadelphia - that I learned the truth, and that truth made me be able to open my eyes about the past.

We didn't learn about Samantha's Progressive Era until high school. We didn't learn about how hard it was to immigrate to America, like Kirsten. We didn't learn about the human impact of Pearl Harbor on Hawaii that Nanea experienced - ever. And we surely weren't taught that it was common for white families during the Revolutionary War to own enslaved people.

American Girl isn't just a brand, or female empowerment. American Girl is an important resource to teach people like me, who come from states where the education system isn't accurate, the truth about our history. And that's why it pains me how American Girl has been shying away from exploring historical eras, making the books shorter and shorter, releasing dolls with less complex plots, focusing more on established intellectual property instead of regular girls. And if for some reason, Felicity is being forgotten because of something that could be a teachable moment for children about the uncomfortable truth about our nation's past, then that is the antithesis of what American Girl was started to do - and what American Girl's legacy is.